Aliens: Colonial Marines was released in 2013 by Gearbox and was criticized by pretty much everyone. A particular sour spot was left by the main antagonists of the game, Aliens, who were actively acting stupid and were nothing like the cunning, deadly monsters you’d expect. It seems, however, that most AI problems can be solved by fixing a small spelling error in the game code.
A thread on ResetEra mentions a ModDB post from a user who made it his mission to overhaul the game. When digging through the game files, he noticed a single letter typo in the .ini file.
ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTeather
Im sure you’ll notice the spelling mistake
ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTether
If you fix it to look like the above and then play the game, the difference is pretty crazy!
Why is this line important? There are two reasons :
1) AttachXenoToTeather doesn’t do anything. Its basically empty or stripped
2) AttachPawnToTether does ALOT. It controls tactical position adjustment, patrolling and target zoningWhen a Xeno is spawned, it is attached to a zone tether. This zone tells the Xeno what area is its fighting space and where different exits are. In Combat, a Xeno will be forced to switch to a new tether (such as one behind you) so as to flank, or disperse so they aren’t so grouped up etc. (*disclaimer* this is inferred opinion, I cant see the actual code only bits)
Whenever the game tried to do this, nothing happened. Now it does!
A ResetEra user named JigglesBunny said they reinstalled the game and used the fix. It worked, and the difference in the Xenos behavior was immediately recognizable: they crawl more often, try to use terrain advantage to flank you and are generally speaking more aggressive and engaged.
PCGamer made a video comparison of the game with and without the fixed ini file.
